


Exelixium

by Ikebana



Category: Original Work
Genre: But only implied, Human Experimentation, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27600995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ikebana/pseuds/Ikebana
Summary: The musings of a lab director about his life's work
Kudos: 1





	Exelixium

I don’t even remember how we found this place, a stroke of luck or a twist of fate. This tiny beach, barely larger than an average car port, the only entrance to this place. Subsurface scans found something strange about this place, a natural dead end with a fake wall, an absolute gold mine on the other side of a thin sheet of cliffside. We broke through, of course, though most of us had to wait in the boats; the beach was too small for all of us, only those tasked with breaking through the wall remained. We watched from a distance, holding our breath in anticipation, obsessively checking through spyglasses and binoculars in the hope that we weren’t wasting our time.

We were successful.

One of our men had nearly fallen as he broke through the wall, the cavernous space behind the thin veneer a thing of wonder. It was too exciting to wait for all the procedures and safety checks to be completed, we needed to be in there, I needed to be in there, to see what treasures were now mine. It was disheartening initially, to walk whisper-quiet and tentative through the cave, but then we had made the discovery that saved us the heartbreak of a failed project. Our torchlight caught the ochre edge of an ancient brushstroke, a smear of earthen paint on the wall of a sealed cave. We had found cave paintings, but not just the Neolithic paintings of horses and cattle, or the strange ancient stick figures that were commonly found in other such circumstances. No, we had found a story, a pointed message aimed directly at us, mirrored in the actions of the painting. They depicted figures, painted in as bright of an orange they could make and glowing softly blue at points, breaking through the wall of the cave into the realm of the ancients. 

Everything had been worth it to see this, proof that this was what we were meant to do, that this project wasn’t doomed to fail. All of us were ecstatic, exhilaration and relieved joy flooding the air through shouts and cries and tears of joy. 

But, just for a second, we paused.

We’d found the cave, we’d found proof we were meant to be here, proof that our coming was preordained and expected, so where was our reward? Surely, this couldn’t be all we did this for? I had turned frantically to the paintings, scanning them at a frenetic pace, near crazed with the need to prove that this wasn’t all we would be given for the sacrifices we made to get here. There! In the corner! The last line of the final painting, depicting a man running madly around the cave, trailed off to the left, distinct lines from individual fingers dragging along the wall, splitting the line as it went. Like a disciple following the hand of their god, I had trailed along the path left in the ichor, until I finally noticed where it was leading me. The ancient ink led to a doorway of sorts, the cave naturally formed at just the right height and width to be an archway, leading us further into the depths. We went further in, tracking the proverbial breadcrumbs through the doorway and deeper into the cave systems. 

We’d gone further and further, our ochre lifeline eventually running out, but by then we were so infected with wonder that we didn’t care if it led to our deaths. I have no memory of how long we merely explored, too enthralled in our success to care about the passage of time, only realising we had been there for more than a moment when we were beset by hunger. We stayed in the caves, living down there and exploring, more and more, learning our way around the anthill we had claimed as our own. Eventually, we remembered our purpose here, what the subsurface scans had picked up that had been the genesis of our search, and took to scouring our new home with scanners and detectors. The scans led us to a small, winding corridor, ending in a dead end. We had learned by now though, that many places we had thought were dead ends were shining beginnings, shielded from us by rock. So we began the process that brought us here again; digging through the layer of cave, the corridor too narrow for anyone but the digging crew to be in there at one time. 

We broke through much faster than before, the rock thinner and less daunting after the sheer elation of our previous success. The cave we revealed was far smaller than any other we had seen so far, and was completely covered in paintings. Our painted welcome in the cave where we broke through paled in comparison, every surface of this greenhouse-sized cavern carpeted in dried ochre and ancient intention. But our search was not yet done, the scanners continuing to push us towards the far wall, insisting with mechanical beeping that there was something further beyond. There was a single naked area of wall in the painted room, a space just large enough to be a doorway bare of marking, exactly where the scanners were straining on their leads to go. So we pushed on.

Through that carved out archway, we found our life’s work, our belated reward for pushing so hard to come here. We found it, clusters of luminescent teal crystals scattered across the surfaces of the cave like clumps of grass in a meadow, encrusting every surface. The whole, cavernous space was illuminated by the glow of thousands of crystals, long pillars of mineral bisecting the space, piercing high into the humid air above our heads. It was breathtaking, not just because it was beautiful - though it was - but because we had finally found our life’s work. Those strange, hauntingly glowing crystals growing innocently and untouched inside of this ancient cave. Nothing could have been more fulfilling.

We harvested some of the mineral, revered it too much to try and take all of it at once, and conducted as many tests as we could on it with the rudimentary equipment we’d brought with us. We named it “exelixium”, the evolution elixir, what we had spent years working towards. I’d contacted base, told them that we had finally found it; no more late nights filled with dead ends and alcohol, drowning in the despair as much as the drink. We got funding, materials, connections, pulled on every resource and every favour to get the cave ready. We expanded the caverns we’d found already, exploring further now that it was assured that we were staying. We tunnelled down, built an elevator shaft, made a second level. We dug out sleeping quarters, labs, offices, a lobby, we made this place ours. We experimented and tested further with exelixium, seeing how far we could push it, the exact effect of it on a subject, first mouse, then rabbit, then human, then more. We got recognition for our struggles and our work, articles written in the most prestigious of scientific journals, hedging around what we actually did. We wanted the reward we deserved after everything it took to get here, but it was ours. No one else would be allowed to know where we were or what we did. The articles received backlash for being too vague, not enough of our hard-earned knowledge free to share with the rest of the writhing masses.

We refused interviews after that, shut ourselves away from anyone who would be an obstacle. We needed subjects, and the screeching, squawking public would never let us take them if they knew what we wanted to do. They would do anything to stop us from fulfilling decades of toil and hardship in the name of morality, but we had done too much to let that stop us. 

Our greatest success to date was the discovery of exelixium being liquefiable. We spiked our subjects’ meals and water with it, to see how well they took to changing states and environments, and it worked wonders. We grew more confident, bolder in our experimentation, starting to shed the hesitation that prevented us from conducting the tests we truly wanted to do. In time, after enough consecutive successes, I gave the green light, and the experiment truly began. Morale was the highest it had ever been, even higher than our fateful discovery of the cave had pushed it, the dawn of our greatest triumph lighting our faces in the teal glow of victory. We filled vats the height of a man with liquid exelixium, filled the largest chamber with them. We made large test tubes, filled them with more exelixium, and sequestered them into the second subterranean level. We were ready, and we had our subjects.

We suspended the subjects in the tanks and waited for the results. Over the days they were in there, they became progressively taller and their muscle mass increased drastically. Many days of anticipation passed while we waited for the calculated length of time to pass. All the subjects exited the steeping with accelerated vitality, those with prior health conditions finding them gone, their bodies in a new state of permanent, boundless youth. We put them through rigorous testing, measuring and calculating everything we could think of and found them all beyond our highest estimates. They were perfect, beyond our wildest dreams, and proved conclusively that we had succeeded. 

The subjects began training, being pushed as far as we could possibly go and then further, their increased vim and vigour allowing them power beyond anything a human was ordinarily capable of, even the strongest of athletes. We converted spaces in the cave to accommodate our new purpose, no longer to contain and convert the subjects, but to train them. Until the day one of them escaped. 

Subject 6, the absolute median of all the subjects, the pure average, apparently decided that it had the right to leave the cave. It took nothing with it, but caused quite a lot of panic. How would the world react to it if they found it? How did it disappear? Where did you go, and why did it decide to leave then and not earlier? Too many questions and not enough time to worry. 

We’d been warned by the main team about the signs, that something was going to happen and we would need our subjects to deal with it. We prepared them further, pushed them to train more, needed them to be better than they were, no matter how. We equipped them with what they needed, weapons, armour, anything required. In the meantime, we had made our own preparations. Our cave, our precious cave, would be too close to the battle to stay. We had to leave, before everything we had learned and sacrificed for was destroyed. We stayed as long as we could, until the very last second, until the subjects were sent out and we could hear the screeching and long, rumbling booms of a battle not too far away, until the rumbles were so loud they shook the walls of the cave. We left, and I will forever regret leaving it behind. No matter how many photos we took, or memories we had of the place, I will forever regret fleeing the cave.

I just hope to god no overly curious son of a bitch has found our precious exelixium. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this, thanks! This started as a draft script for a game, but got reworked as a short story!   
> Feel free to comment or just leave a kudos and run, thanks a bunch either way!  
> See you next time 👋


End file.
